Latest news with #SuicideSquad
Buzz Feed
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
James Gunn Confirms Major "Guardians" Cameo In "Superman"
It's no secret that superhero films are coming back bigger and better than ever and James Gunn's Superman — starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan and Nicholas Hoult — is no exception. This isn't the first time James has taken a swing at the big world of superheroes. Before taking a seat as co-CEO of DC Studios, he directed and wrote the enormously successful Guardians of the Galaxy franchise under Marvel — and the fans don't let him forget it! Prior to sitting down with press in the Philippines, the Suicide Squad director dropped hints via replies on Threads that some of the Guardians cast were placed as "Easter eggs" and everyday we've been wondering... WHO COULD IT BE? Now, we finally have an answer. Hold onto your capes! In an exclusive interview with BuzzFeed Australia, the Suicide Squad director revealed a DC and Marvel character crossover, that made us audibly gasp. From the short Superman preview screening, we've already spotted the voice of Rocket Racoon — Bradley Cooper — but James let us in on a few more cameo secrets. "I will give you something that nobody knows, but Pom Klementieff is one of the robots. It's Bradley and then it's also Pom and Michael Rooker is another one of the robots," he shared. Yes, it was music to our ears. You might recognise Pom as Guardians' Mantis and Michael as papa Yondu Udonta. As for other Guardians castmates, Zoe Saldaña and Dave Bautista, James mentioned "keeping them in the wings" — perhaps for another world-stopping reveal just like this! Not only is the future of DC looking incredibly bright — the slate is looking packed for the next year or two. "We're going to be able to find out the future very quickly after this," the Superman director teased. "This movie comes out in July, and then Peacemaker begins in August. We're getting right into it. We have Supergirl and we have Clayface and we have Lanterns. They're all coming out one after the other. Now that we're starting, it's going to start coming pretty full force at people." Get your tickets to Superman — in cinemas July 10, 2025.
The South African
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The South African
Viola Davis crowned highest-grossing black actress in Hollywood
Viola Davis has just rewritten the Hollywood record books. Her films have now grossed over $15 billion worldwide, which is a jaw-dropping R270 billion. This makes her the highest-grossing Black film actress in history. Viola Davis's journey began far from the glitz of Hollywood, as she was born in South Carolina and raised in poverty. She once said, 'The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity', according to Time Magazine . Her filmography is a greatest hits collection. Viola Davis brings to life fierce government official Amanda Waller in the Suicide Squad franchise and heartfelt maid Aibileen in The Help . Suicide Squad alone pulled in over R13.4 billion worldwide. The Woman King , where she led a cast of African warriors, resonated deeply with African audiences and grossed more than R9.7 billion globally. The actress also made history as the first Black actress to achieve the 'Triple Crown of Acting'—winning an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony. She's also one of the rare few to land the EGOT, adding a Grammy to her trophy cabinet. 'I became an artist, and thank God I did, because we are the only ones who can tell our stories,' she once said. Her influence stretches beyond the silver screen, as Viola Davis uses her platform to champion diversity and representation. She's spoken out about the need for authentic Black stories in Hollywood. 'What I want to be known for is being an artist who does not shy away from the truth'. Viola Davis's rise feels personal; her roles in films like The Woman King connect directly to African history and culture. She's proof that talent, when given a stage, can inspire millions. 'I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me,' Davis has said, echoing the spirit of ubuntu that resonates here. As the world celebrates her R270 billion milestone, Viola Davis remains humble. 'Success is not about the destination; it's about the journey,' she reminds us. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
The Verge
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
As part of a restructuring, it's putting its efforts into four tentpoles:
Warner Bros. Games is now focused on its biggest franchises. Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and the DC Universe, as reported by Variety. Let's just hope the next DC Universe game fares better than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
The Age
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The accusations faced by Jared Leto
Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said: 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (the camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant died when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though, and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when he learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV+'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $US90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars, albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused, with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects are now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar whizz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may come to regret that line.
Sydney Morning Herald
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The accusations faced by Jared Leto
Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said: 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (the camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant died when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though, and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when he learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV+'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $US90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars, albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused, with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects are now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar whizz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may come to regret that line.
